Rosencrantz & Guildenstern, Ltd.

China has generally proven to be increasingly unwilling to co-operate with America,

via US foreign policy: Speaking too softly | The Economist.

I was pretty disappointed with The Economist‘s endorsement of then-candidate Obama during the election, and since then they’ve been pretty meager in their criticism of him.  However, this article shows that President Obama’s attempts to pussyfoot around controversial international issues to avoid offending Iran, Russia, and (especially) China have not had the intended results.  For example:

The Chinese government responded by becoming more assertive. It helped to scupper a deal at the Copenhagen summit on climate change in December and snubbed the American president by sending a deputy minister to a crucial meeting. China has generally proven to be increasingly unwilling to co-operate with America, for example over United Nations sanctions against Iran.

Now, I’m not the biggest fan of the Dalai Lama (as I tend not to like autocrats in general), but at least the administration is showing some backbone by meeting with him despite China’s objections.  The lesson to be learned here is that we cannot ever compromise our principles just to get along with repressive, anti-democratic regimes.